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US mags do it by numbers

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American magazines are playing withnumbers. They are doubling them.Not their circulation figures.No, the numbers they use on some of their special issues:, on their cover blurbs,For example The 50 Wealthiest Families in America, The 50 Top Stars in Hollywood, The World's 50 Best Holiday Resorts.This year the magic figure is now 100.

Peoplemagazine this year for example has an issue with the cover line The 100 Most Beautiful People.Maxim has The Hottest 100.This week’s Los Angeles Timesmagazine lists The100 Most Powerful People in California. Vanity Fair matches that with The 100 Most Powerful People in the World.

Why the doubling up? Is it inflation? Or just a case of one-upmanship.At Vanity Fair a spokesman said they were trying to give their list abroader, more global reach.Larry Hackett, managing editor of People, told the NY Times his editors were “so beguiled this yearby the number of fabulous faces, they decided to double the number”

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In fact magazines find such specialissues do sell..And they often generate a lot of publicity. People magazine’sMost Beautiful People issue this year was topped only in

sales by the one that featuredpictures of Brad Pitt andAngelina Jolie’sbabyShiloh on the cover.Time magazine celebrates its Top 100 list of MostInfluental People with a lavish black-tie party in New York.

Some editors profess to hate lists – but that hasn’t halted their growth.“Magazines do too many lists” says David Granger, the editor ofEsquire – but that hasn’t deterred the magazine from compiling its ownTop 100 list forits October issue. But Esquire’s list will be different from the others, Granger insists. It will be a list of items and things that the editors predict will make news in the coming years.For example: A country to watch: Egypt.

And how did his magazine settle the new magic number of 100?“We debated that quite a bit, whether it should be 100 or not” he said. ‘”We thought 101 sounded too much like a cigarette ad.”